by Luanne Rice
Cass took a deep breath, then shook her head.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” he conceded.
She could see the confusion in his eyes. The whole thing was painful, and nothing about whether to enroll Josie in North Point seemed clear-cut.
“Shit,” Billy said. “Now I wish I hadn’t told the crew we were going out.”
Cass tried to smile. “At least admit you’re dying to go. I know you, Billy. You can’t wait to go fishing in your new boat.” A pause. “I don’t even blame you,” she said reluctantly.
“You don’t?”
“Not really.”
“Come here,” he said, holding out his arms.
She leaned into his body, closing her eyes to make the time stretch out. A ten-day trip, coming right after four days out. Billy had been away for longer. She felt like being sarcastic, asking if he planned to make an appearance on Thanksgiving. But she held back. Billy hugged her, swaying slightly, saying nothing. She had the feeling that anything she said would be dangerous right now, and she’d have ten long days to regret it.
Late Tuesday morning, right after her hair appointment, Mary Keating stopped at the warehouse, to meet Jimmy for lunch. She said hello to everyone working in the tank room.
“Jim took the truck down to Old Lyme,” Jack Doherty called.
“Standing me up, is he?” Mary said, pretending to be angry. She loved ribbing the guys.
“No, just delivering fish to the Inn. He said he’d be back by noon.”
“Well, he’d better be. I’ll just wait up in the office,” Mary said. Climbing the steep wooden stairs, she paused twice, to catch her breath. One of these days, she was going to quit smoking. Inside the office she found Cass hard at work, filling orders.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Mary said.
“Hi, Mom,” Cass said. She cleared a stack of magazines off the chair beside her, and Mary sat down. “Your hair looks nice.”
“She permed it too tight,” Mary said, instinctively touching her hair. Nancy, her regular hairdresser, was out on maternity leave, and the new girl had left the solution on too long.
“Don’t worry, Mom. It’s really pretty.”
Mary smiled, almost believing her. “Where’s the little one?”
“Zach took her on a field trip,” Cass said. ‘To the science museum.”
“Oh, what fun,” Mary said. She hadn’t met Zach, but she knew he was doing wonders for Josie. Josie seemed less frustrated, less irritable and angry. And Mary could hardly contain her relief that Cass was finally considering North Point. Mary had heard such fine things about the place. And it would take some of the load off Cass.
“Mom,” Cass said, wheeling her chair around to face Mary head-on. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Oh. You mean about your father.” Mary sighed. She snapped open her purse to find her cigarettes. This was never easy, explaining Jim to his own daughters. The man was a bundle of contradictions: simultaneously generous and miserly, outgoing and suspicious.
“Is he really going ahead? With his big plan?”
“He says so.”
Cass stared, unblinking. “Is he serious?”
Mary struggled, trying to find the best answer. She knew, had always known, how to read Jim. Always full of pomp and circumstance, he was occasionally full of wind. But explaining that to Cass, regardless of the fact that she had children of her own, felt wrong to Mary. She believed that a daughter, no matter what her age, needed to respect her father.
“Is he?” Cass pressed.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Mary said. Cass searched her eyes. Very slightly, Cass’s shoulders relaxed.
“Is he scared of retiring?”
“Terrified,” Mary said, exhaling smoke. She felt lucky to have such a perceptive daughter.
“Why can’t he just go on the way he has? Spending a few hours here when he feels like it? It’s not as if …”
Mary imagined Cass was going to say that it wasn’t as if Jim ran the place anymore, and she felt glad Cass had stopped herself. “You know your father,” Mary said. “He likes to do things in a big way. He’ll go out with a bang.”
“Why don’t we just throw him a great party, all his friends and a Dixieland band?” Cass asked. “He can pretend to retire, and we can keep the wharf.”
“Everyone wants to feel needed,” Mary said. She knew this better than anyone. All through their marriage, Jim would forge ahead, damn the torpedoes, never asking Mary for her advice or opinion. He was the great independent, running the whole show; women fell in love with him and business competitors hated him. Often Mary had wondered whether he needed her at all, whether he would miss her if she were gone.
Ashamed to admit it, she felt strangely grateful to hear Jim worrying about retiring. Last night, in the middle of a bad dream, he had cried out. Mary had shaken him awake, as she always did. But this time Jim had turned to her. He’d slipped his arms around her, pulled her close, and, after a while, fallen back to sleep without moving away.
“Your father will be fine,” Mary said, in response to a question Cass hadn’t asked.
“He can’t sell this place,” Cass said. “There’s too much of him in it.”
Mary nodded. She had to agree with that.
T.J. had always expected a breakup to be eventful. He’d see girls in high school crying with their friends, guys punching out their own lockers. But this breakup seemed to happen without him. Alison just stopped sitting with him on the bus. Ever since he’d called her house that night, she wouldn’t talk to him. Now when he’d call, the answering machine or her mother would pick up. Either way, T.J. would get the same message: Alison’s not home. He thought he was going crazy.
She moved everywhere surrounded by her friends, like a squadron of strawberry-scented blond bodyguards. T.J. would sit in his usual bus seat, staring at the back of her head. She moved as if nothing were wrong, as if she had nothing on her mind but getting to school. Sometimes she wouldn’t be on the bus at all, and he’d know she was getting a ride with someone who had a license.
Four days after she stopped talking to him, he waited near her locker until she came down the hall alone. He knew her schedule; she had just come from biology lab, and now she had a free period.
“Hi,” he said.
“Oh, hi,” she said, as if he were just any kid. It killed him that she could look so normal when he felt like he was dying.
“So, what’s up?”
“The sky, the moon, the ceiling …” She giggled.
“You seem happy,” he said.
“I’m okay. You?” She turned toward him, her arms full of books, and suddenly T.J. thought he was going to lose it. Just the way she said, “You?” As if she couldn’t care less, just wanted to be polite so he’d leave faster.
“Not so good,” he said.
“Well, you’d better get over that. We have exams this week. And Thanksgiving next Thursday.”
“What happened?” T.J. asked in a voice so low he didn’t know if she could hear him.
She tossed her head, impatient. “I just think we should break up.”
“I figured that.”
She stood there, the silence between them growing.
“Because of Martin, right?” T.J. asked.
She shrugged. “Not only.”
“Then what?”
For a second, T.J. could swear she had a tear in her eye. This was the Alison he loved, whose feelings were all over her face, making her voice quaver, her hands tremble. The Alison from a broken family, with parents who didn’t understand her or love her enough; the Alison that only T.J. could comfort.
“What?” he said again.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” she said. Her voice quavered, but from something hot, like anger. Her brows scrunched into a frown. She looked at him straight on.
I can be different, T.J. wanted to say. I can change. Let me take care of you. But his voice wouldn’t work.
“It’s too in
tense, okay? Last week I thought I was pregnant. I’m not,” she said hurriedly, probably frightened by the sight of his face.
“I wish you were,” T.J. said. He didn’t care if they were only fifteen. He loved her so much, he’d marry her tomorrow. He’d fish on his father’s boat and support Alison and the baby, find them a little place where they’d all love one another.
“God, that’s sick!” she said, looking disgusted. “When you talk like that, T.J., I don’t know what to say. Don’t love people so much; you scare them.”
“You can’t just decide to love someone less,” T.J. said. He had to hold himself back from pleading with her. The effort caused him actual, nauseating pain.
“I just can’t take it,” she said. “We were getting too serious. Even my mother noticed it.”
“I thought your mother didn’t care.”
“I just want to see other people for a while,” she said.
“Martin,” T.J. said.
“He’s another person.” Alison stood there, her chest pushed forward and her nose turned up. T.J. stared at her, as if he were memorizing her features, trying to figure out how so many beautiful parts could make a girl look so cold and snotty. He started walking away.
“We can be friends,” she called after him.
T.J. walked past room 301, where he was already missing English class, down the north stairs, out the north door, and across the football field. Snow flurries swirled in the wind. He’d left without his jacket or his books, and he just kept walking. He couldn’t have said exactly why, whether he wanted to scare Alison or prove to her how completely desperate he felt, or whether he just wanted to show her he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill wimp lovesick sucker, but T.J. was on his way home to get the gun.
Marriage agreed with Nora; she never would have believed how much she loved it. She felt utterly transformed, like one of those women in a magazine makeover who start out drab and listless and, three pages later, turn out to be beautiful. Her parts were all the same, but suddenly her eyes sparkled, her hair had a sheen, her skin glowed. Nora felt as new as her name: Nora Randecker. She couldn’t wait until after Thanksgiving, to send out boxes of Christmas cards imprinted with the message: “A Happy Holiday Season from Mr. & Mrs. Willis Randecker.” Yesterday their new checks had arrived, printed with both their names, and Nora kept peeking at them, as if she couldn’t quite believe they were real.
Since their marriage, she’d changed her hours. She worked lunch and early dinner, and she left the restaurant in time to fix dinner for Willis at home. An hour before lunch one cold November day, as she gazed out Lobsterville’s picture windows, wondering what Willis was doing, she saw Bonnie’s station wagon weaving backward down the wharf, Bonnie at the wheel. Bonnie backed right up to the warehouse loading dock.
Nora pulled on her long black alpaca coat and headed into the wind. By the time she reached the warehouse, Cass was on the loading dock, too, pushing a tire. The Keating girls stored their snow tires in the warehouse from April till November every year. At the first hint of snow, they would switch their tires. Nora glowed; just this morning Willis had taken her tires from the warehouse, driven her 280Z down to Ledoux’s Garage to have them mounted and balanced.
“They’re forecasting six inches,” Nora called.
“Wouldn’t you know it?” Bonnie moaned. “My first gig’s in Newport this afternoon, and we’re having a blizzard.”
“It’s not a blizzard,” Cass said, shoving the second tire across Bonnie’s tailgate.
“What gig?” Nora asked.
“It’s a quilt expo,” Bonnie said. She was bundled warmly in a scarlet mackinaw that made her look like a magnificent red bell pepper. “I’m selling my brownies at the food table.”
Nora peered into the front seat and saw an enormous basket covered with a linen towel. Bonnie whipped off the cloth. She’d wrapped each brownie in cellophane and attached a hand-lettered sticker. Nora read the labels: Mocha Toffee Crunch, Fudge Lava Whirl, Peanut Butter Sticky.
“Do you think the names are stupid?” Bonnie asked, her brow tight with seriousness.
“They are delicious names,” Cass called from the loading dock. Nora was thinking she might have toned them down, but Cass threw her a warning look.
“I’d buy one,” Nora said.
“Get moving,” Cass said to Bonnie. “There’s going to be a tire line at Ledoux’s, and you want to hit the road before the snow starts.”
“You can take mine if it’s ready first,” Nora said.
“Thanks!” Bonnie called. Cass and Nora waved as she pulled away.
“Where’s Josie?” Nora asked, glancing around.
“With Belinda. Belinda stayed home from school today.”
“Oh, is she sick?”
“A bad case of VR. Can you believe it?”
“Belinda has her period already?” Nora asked.
“She’s thirteen,” Cass said. “She told me she’d spent the night curled in a ball, wishing she’d been born a boy. Also, she has three tests tomorrow. That might have something to do with it. My good student.”
“Doesn’t take after her mother, that’s for sure,” Nora said fondly.
“I saw Willis this morning,” Cass said, crouching on the loading dock so her head was level with Nora’s.
“It’s the little things about marriage,” Nora said. “I never imagined how it would feel to have my husband tell me to sleep late while he had my snow tires put on.”
“I haven’t experienced that, exactly,” Cass said. “Billy’s always fishing at the first snow. I’m quitting work in an hour or so; I’ll get mine put on then. Dad’s been hounding me all morning. Just cause he’s so efficient and thought of it last night.”
“I love being taken care of,” Nora said. She had the feeling she’d said the wrong thing; she wondered if maybe Cass and Billy had had a fight. Nora had always wondered what their fights were like, whether they had knockdown-dragouts, like thunderstorms, to counterbalance the steady pull of electricity between them.
“Willis is being really patient with Dad,” Cass said.
“Isn’t he?” Nora said, thrilled that Cass would notice. “He drives down almost every day to talk to him.”
“Are you as upset as I am?”
“About Dad?”
“About him wanting to sell out.”
“Well, I would be, if I thought he’d actually go through with it.”
“You don’t think he will?”
Nora shook her head. “Let’s face it. Dad loves his big ideas. But how often …”
“Does he actually go through with them?” Cass said, nodding her agreement.
“I think Willis is helping him.”
“Dad loves talking real estate, and Willis is a great listener. I just stay in the background, trying to keep my mouth shut. Dad’s determined to leave us all ‘set for life.’”
“I know. Willis has to break it to him gently that selling the wharf isn’t exactly like winning the jackpot. After taxes and everything, there wouldn’t be all that much left.”
“I can see how Dad feels,” Cass said, squinting as she looked over the harbor. “We love this place so much, we feel like someone would have to pay us a fortune to get it away from us.”
Suddenly Cass’s gaze traveled down the pier, and Nora looked over her shoulder. Here came Al Sweet, dressed for the North Atlantic, running at full tilt.
“Oh, great. My old flame,” Nora said before she could stop herself. Al had a very sarcastic way of calling her “Mrs. Randecker” every time he saw her.
“Slow down, Al,” Cass called. “The fish’ll wait for you.”
“Nah,” Al said, skidding to a stop. “I hear Billy Medieros is catching them all, cleaning the banks right out. The big shot, with his own boat.”
“My big shot,” Cass said, rocking on her heels.
“Hey, Mrs. Randecker,” Al said, kissing the back of Nora’s hand. “How’s married life treating you?”
“Fine
,” Nora said crisply. As if she’d ever discuss her marriage with Al. His big mustache drooped, and he looked hurt.
“You know I want the best for you, Nora. You’ve gotta know that.”
Cass raised her eyebrows, urging Nora to be nice.
“Okay,” Nora said, smiling at Al. “Thank you. Sincerely.”
“You’re sincerely welcome,” Al said. He continued down the dock and began throwing his gear into the Aurora’s cockpit.
“You can afford to be big about it,” Cass whispered, squeezing Nora’s arm. “He’ll never have anyone like you again. You’ve gotta know that.”
Nora laughed. “I do, don’t I?” On top of everything else, marriage to Willis had given her a sense of humor.
His fourth day at sea on his new boat, with black ice coating the deck and turning the rigging silver, while Cass and her sister stood laughing on Keating’s Wharf, Billy Medieros made his first call to the Coast Guard.
“Mayday, mayday,” he said into the microphone. “This is fishing vessel Cassandra. We need assistance.”
“Coast Guard station Nantucket, we read you Cassandra. What is your position?”
Billy leaned across the chart table, peered at the log. He’d taken a loran reading two minutes earlier, just after the accident, but now he couldn’t read his own writing, his hand had been shaking so badly. Fumbling to draw the book closer, he knocked over the sleek black flashlight Cass had stuck in his stocking last Christmas.
He read the coordinates to the Coast Guard operator. “One hundred twenty miles south-southeast of Sankaty Head,” Billy said. “We’re taking on water.” He paused, catching his breath. “And we’ve lost two men.” He blinked, seeing Frank Santos and Jesse Gabriel slide down the stern, through the trawl door, into the bottle-green wash. No more than five minutes had passed since it had happened.
“Dispatching rescue vessels,” the operator said.
“It’s an emergency,” Billy said, and the words sounded hollow. Why else would he be calling the Coast Guard? At first he’d thought they’d caught a sea monster—its slimy black head rose up above the surface, with the Cassandra’s dark nets cascading like a mourning veil, trapping it. Then the water parted, and the dark hull of a submarine glistened, hovering on the surface. They’d trapped its periscope.